Happy Ralinala: Front row view of how women empowerment transforms

Head of ABSA Business Banking, Happy Ralinana, was blessed with the intellect that gave her the ability to matriculate at 15 and, later, an MBA. She learnt about female empowerment first-hand through her bread winning mother who was a taxi driver in the 1970s – as tough and unlikely a job as any lady might find herself doing. In this wide ranging discussion, Happy talks to Biznews.com’s Alec Hogg about entrepreneurship, her life, helping empower women, and what might change if Jacob Zuma’s successor were female.

I’m with Happy Ralinala, who is the Managing Principal at ABSA Business Banking. What does ‘Managing Principal’ mean? You guys have all these fancy titles now in corporate life.

It is. My colleagues outside of South Africa would possibly be Managing Directors and I think you know that there’s a big connotation around a Director and looking at our corporate structures, etcetera. According to our JSE, a Director is really somebody who holds some sort of governance role within a business and therefore, we’re trying to align with the rest of our colleagues across but ideally, ‘Principal’ is the right one for South African business.

You run the show.

Definitely. I head our Business Banking in South Africa.

Where did you do your MBA?

At Bond university when they were still here in Sandton. That was in 2000 to 2001.

Have you found that that’s helped you do your job better?

Definitely. I’m part of the alumni and still interact with most of the Bond alumni across the globe. Bond University has always been around entrepreneurship, but not only that. It was founded by an entrepreneur in Brisbane.

Happy, on Sunday it was the International Woman’s Day and I had the privilege in Davos this year, of meeting with Phumzile, our former Deputy President. She really is a shining star on the global stage for South Africa, running the UN’s Woman Programme. Listening to her, she’s really doing a great job and looking at the realities of what we have around life, it’s almost as if we have two worlds. One world where people like Phumzile, doubtless yourself… Well, you work for one of only two listed companies that have a woman as CEO, which is a little scary if you think about it. On the other hand, you have Boko Haram that are taking schoolchildren and making them into brides, and other religions that are subjugating women in huge way. I’m sure you’ve thought about these things, being right in the middle of all of this yourself.

I think about them all the time because my mum was (and still is) an entrepreneur. She was a taxi driver in Soweto in 1970. Just looking at how she actually had to develop coping mechanisms and skills in a male-dominated environment; it’s currently every woman’s challenge. Not only in South Africa or on our continent, but all over. One of the articles I read, which really inspired me to also start looking deeply into woman entrepreneurship, was written by an economist in 2013 where they spoke about Ghana and Thailand (I think there were about six countries), which really drive women entrepreneurship. The numbers decrease as you go into other countries. Pakistan, has no women participation at all. You look at these separate worlds and yet, women are the larger population and have a significant role to play because not only do they (1) work for themselves, but they also look after families and they contribute significantly in communities. If you look at the role of women, if all of them could be allowed/supported into a business environment (especially the formal one) because most women are in an informal part of the business.

Can you do that? Do you have hiring practices in your division/unit of Absa?

Yes, we do. What I need to say to you is that more than 65% of our workforce is women and we continually do that. In addition, we’re now going with a programme, which we call a ‘supply diversity programme’ where we’re looking at procurement practices and policy.

On the 13th of April, for the first time we’re bringing in many of our customers and some of the women in the industry who could supply us or come and share what they could offer us, as suppliers into our environment. We’re putting a certain amount into our procurement budget that we could actually give out to women, so that they could participate.

What does your mom think about this, given that she would have really had the sharp end? I guess that mining would be the only other industry I can think of, where it would be as difficult to be a woman as it is in the South African taxi industry.

I believe she had her best shot at it.

What did she think of you and what you’re doing now?

She admires me. One of the things she always thinks about is that she never thought I’d come this far. I matriculated at the age of 15, by default. I don’t know how that happened but when my dad passed on, my mom had a neighbour who was a teacher. They took us with her to school and she was a Grade 1 teacher. We then got to sit at the back of her class while she was teaching and I think I participated in her class because she and my mom always said ‘she’s participating and she’s doing something. Let’s just see where it goes’ and that’s how it started’. It never stopped and I just continued, leveraged the environment I was in and the support structure that was there in the community. That was a woman support structure too, if you just look at that and how everything came up together.

Happy, finishing Matric at 15. Obviously, when God gave out the brains, you were very close to the front of the queue. What about the people who were at the back? What about those who weren’t as privileged in the intellectual stakes as you are? Surely, they’re the people (and I’m talking about women in particular), who need some kind of assistance.

The big challenge that we all have is access to information. Women are driven and I see it now with a number of series that we are driving, for which I’ve taken personal accountability. We call those Absa Women in Business and Absa Women in Series. We take them across the country.

We did 13 cities last year where we just go around, engage, and give them information on what could happen. If you just give them an opportunity to find out (1) an environment where they could go and ask, women grab those opportunities. They’re hungry. Access to information is the first thing. How do I get to do this and how do I get to navigate a certain space? Mostly, it’s a nurturing environment that gives them confidence. A number of women have little education but because they have that inner motivation and aspiration to just, do things and do them very well, they succeed.

Well, Muhammad Yunus has shown us that story, hasn’t he, from Bangladesh. Bringing it back to South Africa again, we have a President who has four wives.

Yes.

That sends all kinds of messages, but perhaps our next President could be a woman. There are many possibilities there because we have very talented women in very senior positions outside of the country.

My father-in-law has five wives too, so I come from that environment and I understand the environment. It just depends how you look at it from the outside but internally, if you’re inside it’s a great support structure. It’s a place where everybody feels they have five mothers. It’s nurturing. It possibly depends on those families’ values and the communities’ values. It’s a different environment altogether and I come from an environment where my mother has been the chief of the house.

It’s complicated. It’s a culture. It’s not something we can pass judgement on, but it does send a signal. If we had a woman President in South Africa, would you think it would send a different signal?

Definitely. Across the continent, women do need some sort of affirmation and that’s what it is. Just look at Sirleaf Johnson. She brings that. If you look at how she handled the crisis, she was hands-on. She was on the ground. I always say that’s a different perspective, which a woman brings in any environment. It’s the emotional attachment that goes with it, which then changes the dynamic altogether because it then says ‘we’re owning it together’. Women also bring nurturing and sensitivity in any environment they’re dealing with because of that emotional connection that they always bring in any situation.

Taking that back to entrepreneurship and the opportunity that one has here (because it is coming from such a low base), something that was discussed by Phumzile in Davos was ‘when you give money to a woman, 90% of it is reinvested in the family’. She wasn’t prepared to say what percentage of the money (when you give it to men) is reinvested into the family. Clearly, it’s a lot less than that.

Definitely.

From the entrepreneurship perspective, is it because a woman’s traditional place is so full of other responsibilities, that we haven’t seen them growing out or is it because they aren’t given an opportunity?

The world still has a bias towards men. You talk about income disparities that you see everywhere and continuously, just look at the stats from the US Or the countries that continuously do researches; in Europe, you see that and I have no doubt that’s still happening in the continent where we are. That’s the number one challenge, but (2) it’s the women’s educational levels.

As much as we see a whole lot of women growing into education as well as going into tertiary, you now have more females in varsities, than you’d have males. The stats are just amazing. All of that brings a different dynamic to where we are, but it’s still the issue of simple confidence. For example do I feel comfortable talking about the language of business? Do I feel comfortable engaging and asking? Sometimes women really feel that they are not the ones who are supposed to lead such an environment and when we start changing that, everything else is going to change. I have a scenario where I always say ‘you find kids watching the same movie all the time’ Ask yourself. You were watching Tom & Jerry just now. Can we really watch Tom & Jerry right through the day? The reason for that is that kids see themselves in that movie and they can identify with that.

This is where we’re supposed to be – creating those role models where people see themselves. For example, ‘if Jabu can do it and she’s doing it so well, that means I can do it, too. She comes from my community. I’ve always been around her and I see her doing very well’, that would motivate a whole lot of other people. In addition, it’s really about telling those stories of women who’ve made it,what they’ve gone through, and what helped them succeed.

Once you start creating those networks, you’ll have the nurture and support. Not only is it around the financing of the businesses etcetera, but also the non-financial skills. ‘Let’s make my business viable as well as sustainable, as well as for me to not have to sell potatoes and tomatoes too. Maybe I can do something different. Maybe it is the tomatoes and the potatoes. I can cook them but I can also deliver and have an infrastructure that delivers far more than anyone would think I could reach’.

Once you create those possibilities, you find many other people wanting to be in that space because they can see the opportunities.

Apart from your mother, who would be your role model? Clearly, your mother would have been a serious role model.

She still is. A number of woman whom I saw in my community (and I’ll give you a few stories); I don’t want to call them role models. You see, especially in the beauty industry across the globe. For example, in South Africa, you’ll see Jenna Clifford. You will then have Estee Lauder. Now we have Bobbi Brown who just started with a little bit of make-up. In South Africa, we’ll have Marina Maponya who is really, a pioneer. There a number one woman now in construction, Dr Thandi Ndlovu. Dr Ndlovu has done very well if you think where she was a few years ago and where she is now in the construction industry, which is also an industry that no-one had pioneered. You have Ndumiso, who is a partner with GEC in the equipment and especially, the healthcare equipment. As a result, you can look at many women and see them pioneering and doing things differently, and it’s not only in the business sector.

In academics, which we’re just starting to see in South Africa, woman are pioneering the research in the HIV space and the mathematics space, etcetera. When I look at those people, I see myself in them because if they could do it, I could do it, too.

What about that? Just to close off with, you are (to people who work within the banking organisation or banks, generally), a role model. Does that put a responsibility on you?

Oh yes, it does. Definitely. Firstly, in the sense of black girls wanting to see themselves in me, it creates a responsibility to say that the possibilities in our country and in our continent, are amazing. It’s really about being given an opportunity. It’s about having the access to information. Mostly, it’s just inner belief and the confidence. Many things happen in each and every one’s live. How then, do we help individuals go beyond that so that they don’t become the stumbling blocks, which just closes them out of those opportunities?

Happy Ralinala, the Managing Director (well, they call them the Managing Principal) of AbsaBusiness Banking.